Monthly Archives: March 2009

John McCormack at Weekly Standard has a link to a piece that he titles:

Norks prepare to indict two US journalists

I’d never come across that term before but knowing this news story understood it must refer to North Korea. A google search finds that it’s a term used, apparently infrequently, in the rightwing universe. Of course it is.

The number of Americans who believe that the nation is headed in the right direction has roughly tripled since Barack Obama’s election, and the public overwhelmingly blames the excesses of the financial industry, rather than the new president, for turmoil in the economy, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Many are noting a particular passage from Evan Thomas’ article on Krugman in Newsweek after it was excerpted and underlined by Dougj at Balloon Juice

I’m tired of arguing about Krugman with everyone, but I’d like to point out a in Evan Thomas’s piece about Krugman in Newsweek:

If you are of the establishment persuasion (and I am), reading Krugman makes you uneasy. You hope he’s wrong, and you sense he’s being a little harsh (especially about Geithner), but you have a creeping feeling that he knows something that others cannot, or will not, see. By definition, establishments believe in propping up the existing order. Members of the ruling class have a vested interest in keeping things pretty much the way they are. Safeguarding the status quo, protecting traditional institutions, can be healthy and useful, stabilizing and reassuring. But sometimes, beneath the pleasant murmur and tinkle of cocktails, the old guard cannot hear the sound of ice cracking. The in crowd of any age can be deceived by self-confidence…

I agree with John that the piece was content-free in general. But I credit Thomas for admitting what role establishment media plays.

That’s a good thing to know about the establishment media. It should be in every single one of their stories as a boilerplate at the top.

Indeed. I’m a bit too tired to draw this out right now but one ought to note that the admission from Thomas and these responses to it bear a striking similarity to the case against the media long made by Noam Chomsky.

A conversation over at Greg Sargent’s The Plum Line reminded me of this Brittney Spears/Bob Dole ad for Pepsi. At the time, he was also doing ads for Viagra. It is probably the most perverse ad I’ve ever seen.

Texas Sen. John Cornyn is threatening “World War III” if Democrats try to seat Al Franken in the Senate before Norm Coleman can pursue his case through the federal courts.

Cornyn, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, acknowledges that a federal challenge to November’s elections could take “years” to resolve. But he’s adamant that Coleman deserves that chance — even if it means Minnesota is short a senator for the duration.